The medical sector’s treatment of Americans who claim to be transgender is politicized and reckless, not scientific or careful, says a panel of European and U.S. medical experts.
“The politicization of transgender healthcare in the U.S. is unfortunate,” said a letter posted in the Wall Street Journal by 21 professionals from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, Switzerland, and the United States.
It added, “The way to combat it is for medical societies to align their recommendations with the best available evidence—rather than exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks.”
The 21 experts on transsexual healthcare wrote:
Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty. By contrast, the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication and the anguish of regret. For this reason, more and more European countries and international professional organizations now recommend psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgeries as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth.
Dr. [Stephen] Hammes’s claim that gender transition reduces suicides is contradicted by every systematic review, including the review published by the Endocrine Society [of which he is the president], which states, “We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide-prevention measure.
The medical intervention comes amid growing evidence that many young Americans are being deeply harmed by the political campaign to have the government help children and teenagers try to change their sex via the use of drugs, hormones, and surgery.
The European intervention is just part of the public and professional pushback against pro-transgender advocacy in business and government.
“A growing number of countries, including some of the most progressive in Europe, are rejecting the U.S. “gender-affirming” model of care for transgender-identified youth,” Leor Sapir wrote in a June 28 op-ed on TheHill.com.
He continued:
These countries have adopted a far more restrictive and cautious approach, one that prioritizes psychotherapy and reserves hormonal interventions for extreme cases.
In stark contrast to groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which urges clinicians to “affirm” their patient’s identity irrespective of circumstance and regards alternatives to an affirm-early/affirm-only approach “conversion therapy,” European health authorities are recommending exploratory therapy to discern why teens are rejecting their bodies and whether less invasive treatments may help.
If implemented in American clinics, the European approach would effectively deny puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to most adolescents who are receiving these drugs today. Unlike in the U.S., in Europe surgeries are generally off the table before adulthood.
Sapir, an expert at the Manhattan Institute, used his article to carefully describe the scientific weakness in the pro-transgender claims by U.S. advocates.
Watch: “Doctors Trained to Affirm Children’s Transgender Identification”
The professional vs. professional fight is important for debating and improving the medical treatment of children and teenagers, but it is also important for the growing number of lawsuits against popular laws that try to protect American youths from the transgender industry.
For example, a federal judge in Florida relied on U.S. professional groups when he decided to block a child-protection law passed by Florida. “Gender identity is real,” Judge Robert Hinkle wrote, adding:
Those whose gender identity does not match their natal sex often suffer gender dysphoria. The widely accepted standard of care calls for evaluation and treatment by a multidisciplinary team. Proper treatment begins with mental-health therapy and is followed in appropriate cases by GnRH agonists and cross-sex hormones. Florida has adopted a statute and rules that prohibit these treatments even when medically appropriate. The plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that the prohibition is unconstitutional. And they have met the other prerequisites to a preliminary injunction.
But there is growing evidence that the transsexual movement hides the vast damage caused by its political claim that people have a “gender” that must be displayed via genital surgery and cross-dressing:
The growing evidence of bad outcomes — and likely lawsuits — has just prompted an Australian health insurance company to refuse coverage to doctors involved in the business.
One of the co-signers of the letter to the Wall Street Journal is clinical professor Stephen B. Levine at Case Western Reserve University. In March 2020, he testified against the transgender push: